


Origami Cat

by iLibra



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Graves recovering from his captivity, Hospitals, Tumblr Prompt, origami folding, paper animal army, recovery fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-07 17:25:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12845952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iLibra/pseuds/iLibra
Summary: Graves can't do much while he is recovering, tired of not being able to work and damned to do nothing but read. But then Tina brings him a book about origami folding and even if he thinks it's stupid at first, it helps him recover. He's soon surrounded by an army of paper animals until something strange happens.





	Origami Cat

**Author's Note:**

> Fanartcommission by the lovely questionartbox on tumblr <3

At first he was angry, then he went through a phase of depression, but in the end he was exhausted. Exhausted with everything he had had to endure, with everyone telling him to rest and recover and that none of this was his fault. But like everything else, his exhaustion slowly disappeared.

But now, the worst of it all, he was starting to get bored. Sitting in the same hospital bed for days and weeks, even months, everyone refusing to let him take up his job again, saying he had to “recover”, when he really just felt useless. He was being treated like a hurt child when he just wanted to work on something and be useful again.

Why did no one understand that boredom was poison for the mind? He might just go crazy soon if he had nothing to do. How was he supposed to recover when his mind was spinning in circles, trying to figure out what to do with his time? And even reading the occasional book Tina brought him became a pain, the stories being either too stressful or too dull for his liking.

So when Tina visited him again, a new book in hand, he couldn’t help but roll his eyes. Even though he appreciated the gesture and he didn’t have the heart to tell her he was bored of reading books.

“Come on, Mr. Graves, this is a great one. I’m sure you’ll like it!” Tina said, holding it out for him to take, a hopeful gleam in her eyes. Percival sighed, but took the book from her nonetheless. Looking at the colorful cover and title of the book, he arches an eyebrow.

“…Origami?” he asked, looking at Tina like she was crazy.

“Just try it out, okay? Here, I even got you some paper.” she said, placing a thick stable of squared sheets of paper on his night stand. They were arranged in various pastel colors, beautiful reds, greens, yellows, blues and every other color you could imagine. He looked at the paper suspiciously, but thanked her nonetheless.

Tina and Newt were trying so hard to make him feel more comfortable in the hospital and Graves knew he wasn’t easy to work with, but he was eternally grateful for everything they did for him, for not giving up on him like he felt so many others would do.

So he might have thought of folding origami as stupid at first, but decided to give it a try anyway. It was surprisingly harder than you might think, but with as much time on his hands as he has, he figured it out eventually. When he’s allowed to leave the hospital and go home about a week later, he takes his army of paper cranes, frogs, mice and bunnies with him, earning him some weird glaces from the people around him. He doesn’t pay them any mind, though.

He set his origami army down on his desk, opposite of the sofa he was sitting on. Only after settling in and staring at all the animals he made, he thought of something. He took out his wand, pointing in the direction of the pile of his paper animals and mumbled a spell. They start moving around on the table, twisting and turning until they ran around, bumping into each other and exploring their surroundings. He felt a bit stupid, but Percival liked just watching them come to live. Every little paper animal that he had crafted with care and determination, hustling on the table right in front of his eyes.

It wasn’t often that Percival was fascinated by magic these days, but seeing it doing something so… simple, yet beautiful just might be what he needed right now.

The days went by and his army only grew in size. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, but he felt like he was… recovering. And from something as simple as folding some origami animals. It was fascinating to him and he wasn’t about to complain about it.

Someday, however, he noticed something weird. He could have sworn he saw a very thin, delicate cat in the middle of the pile of origami animals, huddled together on the floor. The weird thing about it was, he couldn’t remember ever folding a cat, as simple as it might seem, it wasn’t included anywhere in the book Tina gave to him. And not only that, it was made out of dark black paper, not the bright pastel toned paper Tina brought him.

But then his origami animals moved so fast around each other that it was gone in the blink of an eye and he couldn’t tell if his mind had just been playing tricks on him. He decided it wouldn’t help to think too much about it and tried to forget it happened.

But then, some days later, it happened again, and this time there was no mistaking it. Percival was sitting on his desk, drinking his morning coffee, when he saw a black origami cat sitting there, seemingly looking at him, even without any eyes.

It slowly slid towards him with jerky movements, like it had just recently learned how to move. Only then did Percival notice the subtle black clouds of smoke emanating from the animal. He held his breath while the little creature was making his way towards him. Percival’s heart was beating in his throat. There was a sense of urgency he felt in his chest for some reason. It looked so… helpless and scared, reminding him of…

“Credence?” he whispered and reached out with his hand. Before he could touch it, however, the feline creature dissipated into black smoke, swirling around into nothingness, disappearing.

**Author's Note:**

> If you made it this far: THANK YOU! I'm almost convinced that no one is going to read this little drabble, haha. But if you did, I hope you liked it at least!!  
> This was written based off of a prompt from the fantasticprompts tumblr blog!
> 
> If you actually took the time to read this, why not leave some feedback for me, I'd be really thrilled to hear what you think :>  
> You can also talk to me on [tumblr](http://ilibra.tumblr.com) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/iLiibra) :)


End file.
